The postcard collection had been part of the Photo Collection until 2014, when it was extracted to form a separate collection. It consists of postcards issued in the range from the end of the 19th to the 60s of the 20th century, i.e. from the period of their first appearance to the appearance of postcards as they are used today. They owe their popularity to the expansion of 19th century photography and appeared as a medium of communication in Europe in the 1970s, shortly after the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had introduced an innovation in 1869: an open letter without an envelope, called Correspondenz – Karte or Levelezõ Lap.
A special feature of our new acquisitions are the postcards printed according to the photographs by the Italian photographer Francesco Penco.
In 1906, the Universal Postal Union passed an act abolishing postcards/photo postcards provided exclusively with an address space on their reverse; the act regulates how the postcard face and reverse should look like, i.e. which part is intended for the text and which for the address. Such standardization primarily facilitated delivery and brought order to postcard writing.
Francesco Penco came to Rijeka in 1906 with the task of photographing Rijeka and Sušak for the purpose of printing postcards. That year was a record year for the number of emigrants for the overseas countries, who passed through the port of Rijeka, and that was seen as the opportunity for new standardized postcards to be printed for potential buyers.
Collection manager: Marija Lazanja Dušević